A new study published in the Journal of Preventative Medicine found that good bike and pedestrian infrastructure leads to a notable increase in exercise. Researchers studied exercise habits of residents in Vancouver before and after the construction of a 1.2 mile protected bike and walking lane. Story here.

Citi Bike is expanding its fleet of electric pedal-assist bikes in New York City. The number of e-bikes will grow from 200 to 4,000 but will cost an additional $2 per ride; however, e-bikes (like regular Citi Bikes) will be discounted for NYCHA and SNAP residents, costing $0.50 per ride for those riders. Story here.

The CDC is launching its first investigation into e-scooter injuries. “Preliminary observations from the study found that the vast majority of injuries—98% of them—happen to riders who aren’t wearing helmets. Nearly half of all riders involved in accidents had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit, while 52% tested positive for an illicit substance.” This may kick-start a meaningful conversation on necessary regulations for e-bikes and e-scooters. Hopefully these regulations will help better ensure safety without prohibiting or greatly limiting their use. Story here.

Several cities are enacting legislation to ban cash-free businesses. Cash-free businesses disproportionately affect low-income families, minorities, and immigrants. These groups often don’t have or struggle to get bank accounts and credit lines. Without a bank account or credit card, many people (disproportionately low-income and people of color) would be prevented from purchasing goods in these stores. Story here.

In 2017, Boston’s regional planning agency hired an artist-in-residence to weigh in on planning work in the city. The results have been so successful that they just recently hired a second artist-in-residence. Other cities looking to bring more arts, culture, and creativity to their city should take note of the way Boston has integrated artists into their city planning work. Story here.

The mobility revolution is in full speed, and everyone is working on finding ways to prepare, mitigate, and respond. The way we travel will change dramatically over the next few years. Click the links below to read top news articles and stay informed on the topic!

Despite the growth in alternative modes of transportation, our cities still struggle with unequal representation in the field of transportation itself and are therefore creating transit systems that fail to serve all riders. A new study reveals that women only represent 15% of the transportation workforce. It also found that “women are roughly half as likely as men to take advantage of new transit lines, in large part because of a concern for personal safety”. A similar occurrence can be seen with the unequal representation of ethnic minority groups in the transportation industry. Despite the fast growth in cycling among Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American riders, minority neighborhoods have seen fewer investments in bike facilities and continue to face higher risk of accidents and crashes.

As our cities continue to balance the design of streets for diverse users (e-scooters, bikes, autonomous vehicles, buses, etc.), let’s remember to inform ourselves with data and measure the effectiveness of our decisions.StreetLight Data Inc., debuted a new tool that will measure vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic without the use of physical sensors. StreetLight Data collects location data from more than 70 million devices in the U.S. and Canada and is able to ascertain the real-time location and movement of approximately 20% of an area’s traffic, and project congestion, directional flows, and origin/destination information.

And finally, the most recent of all micro-mobility developments!The sit-down electric scooter. A new company, OjO launched the scooter share in Austin and hopes to expand to other cities in the U.S. We’re keeping our eyes peeled to see how this will change mobility for groups with disabilities and Baby Boomers.

Online vs. Brick and Mortar

Online grocery shopping has been slow to catch on in the U.S. compared to other major countries. Countries where online grocery shopping is more popular tend to have just a handful of highly dense city-centers that make delivery easy and highly profitable. In the U.S., spread out rural and suburban areas add cost and complication to deliveries, offsetting any gains in urban markets. Unless major changes in transportation address this issue, it looks like groceries will remain predominantly a brick-and-mortar good. Story here.

Amazon is using data from customers past purchases and geo-location to sell hyper-targeted goods. Smaller businesses will find it increasingly hard to compete selling the type of goods that are easily bought online (durable, non-perishable). Story here.

Speaking of Amazon (and their new HQs), the Foxconn plant in Wisconsin is a lesson in what happens when city officials don’t do their due-diligence before handing out large incentives to companies. After securing $4 billion in tax breaks, looks like Foxconn won’t deliver the jobs they promised. Story here.

The folks at Bloomberg and CityLab explore why cities continue to broker these deals even when they may not be profitable and their residents don’t support them. Stories here and here.

New & Interesting Retail Concepts

Nike opened their House of Innovation in Manhattan, taking advantage of consumers’ growing desire for experiential shopping. The new flagship is part store, part museum/art gallery, part maker space. Story here.

If you’re in NYC, here are 32 more experimental and concept stores trying out new forms of retail. Story here.

Community-Owned Infrastructure

For communities that are ill-served by existing broadband service (rural areas with limited access or areas with prohibitively high costs), community-owned broadband may be an option. A new map has been released that shows the 750 towns that have successfully rolled out community-owned broadband. Story here. Examples here, here, and here.

Our recent work in West Hartford, CT has served as a reminder of the positive role that enlightened property owners can play in improving downtown retail environments. In our research, we came across an older article memorializing the life of Richard Mahoney, otherwise known as “Mr. West Hartford Center”. For those unfamiliar with West Hartford Center, it is the historic downtown of the community of West Hartford, surrounded by walkable, dense residential neighborhoods that continue to attract people looking for small town living. (I think of places like West Hartford when naysayers say that millennials are moving to the suburbs when in actuality they are moving to towns like this which offer the best of urban living in what are typically categorized as “suburban” environments, yet are anything but!).

Robert Mahoney’s efforts to revitalize West Hartford include lessons and best practices that still resonate with us today. He utilized quite a number of shopping industry tricks of the trade. For readers of this blog, you know that we firmly believe that downtown environments need to be managed in ways more akin to shopping centers – and we love finding examples of how this can work in downtown environments.

Back to Mahoney, here are a few examples of what he did to enliven the downtown according, taken (mostly) from an article in The Hartford Courant. We loved that these interventions aligned so well with our SMAR2T framework, so we took the liberty of organizing the elements of Mahoney’s approach along those lines.

Mahoney supported growth in local Administrative Capacity

Early on he realized how critical a viable merchant’s association was to overall revitalization efforts and required his own tenants to join the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants Association. He also asked other landlords to match their tenant’s contributions to these organizations.

Another key element of Administrative Capacity is leadership – and Mahoney’s leadership and advocacy was clearly instrumental in advancing some of the initiatives outlined here. In our experience, having someone like Mahoney, who is able to build coalitions and strike compromise and who has the confidence of stakeholders from both the public and private sectors, is key to advancing many revitalization efforts. A great leader is someone who is pretty good at herding cats, and it seems that Mahoney had that quality.

Encouraged on-going Redevelopment in both the Public and Private Realms

Landlords were encouraged to maintain and refresh their stores regularly to keep them from looking dated. In the retail industry we call this redevelopment or repositioning. Malls typically do a refresh every ten to fifteen years or so to stay competitive and current.

Investments were made in holiday lights and decorations, as well as planters on public sidewalks (that were watered!)

While the article failed to mention Mahoney’s role in the shared parking lot to the rear of the stores, which required complicated easements and land swaps to allow for access and municipal maintenance, it probably wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that he had something substantial to do with it. We believe this shared parking initiative helped ensure that parking supply was sufficient to meet demand. Frankly, we were a bit surprised that parking woes did not come up first among local business concerns as parking is typically the number one issue that drives business complaints.

Promotion and Marketing Efforts to drive Retail Sales

Holiday television advertisements helped raise awareness of the district

Evening shopping hours

Improvements to Tenant Mix

Mahoney was selective in filling vacancies – sometimes choosing to leave a space vacant until the right business came along. (This is notable for communities looking to institute vacancy penalties. Sometimes vacancies are necessary in support of longer term goals).

While Mahoney came to see the value in restaurants, he initially believed that too many restaurants decreased retail traffic. He discouraging landlords from allowing more than one food establishment per property and also once turned down a Starbucks because he thought it would compete with another cafe in the downtown. He didn’t like banks or financial companies because of the “boring face” they offered to passersby.

Putting it all together, this was quite a comprehensive and well thought out effort to revitalize the downtown and by every indication it worked extremely well. Today West Hartford supports over a hundred retail and service-oriented businesses and continues to pull visitors from throughout the region. It maintains strong retail leasing fundamentals (low vacancy rates and high rental rates) and a good mix of both national chains and mom-and-pop stores. As a subconsultant to FHI, the planning firm leading an update of the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development, we are thrilled to play a role in developing the market research and planning tools that will help ensure that West Hartford Center sees another decade of success. As we develop strategies for the next ten years, you can rest assured that the legacy of Robert Mahoney will continue to guide our efforts.

Larisa Ortiz Associates is a full-service retail planning firm. For more information on how we can help your downtown or mixed-use development, please contact us at info@larisaortizassociates.com or call us at 718-205-5116.

Last month, Google Maps rolled out a new partnership with Lime. In 13 cities worldwide, users can now find Lime bikes and scooters on their Google Maps app. Users can see the bikes and scooters by selecting a destination and pulling up directions. If a Lime bike or scooter is available nearby, it will appear alongside other transportation options (currently: car, bike, public transit, and walking). Then, users can tap on the Lime icon to open the Lime app and complete their purchase.

This partnership is part of the larger last-mile transportation trend. All over the world, cities wrestle with the best way to get people to their destination, and the last mile has historically been one of the tougher conundrums to solve, as even the best public transportation systems still require a bit of travel on the front and back end. Bike-shares are a decent solution, and they have been gaining traction in recent years; however, manual bicycles aren’t the best solution for everyone – they can be challenging if the user is wearing certain clothing (think: skirts, nice suits, or high heels) and prohibitive for people with disabilities. Electric scooters (and to some extent electric bikes) are accessible to a much wider range of people, and new dockless ride-sharing systems, like Lime, allow users to pick up and drop off virtually anywhere, addressing the last mile problem better than docked bike shares.

While some cities have fought against dockless scooters and e-bikes (Nashville notably banned Bird scooters in early 2018), the Lime and Google Maps partnership goes to show that dockless scooters and e-bikes are here to stay. The Google Maps partnership will encourage more and more users, whether or not cities are ready for them. Cities should look to make headway in integrating dockless scooters and e-bikes into their existing infrastructure. That might mean designated parking spots, designated lanes, zones of allowed or prohibited use, or mandated safety gear, depending on the particular city and its needs. Nashville and other cities with previously stringent rules against scooters and bike-shares are now rescinding these rules, realizing it’s nearly impossible to fight the growing desire for this type of transportation. If you’re in one of the 13 cities where Google Maps rolled out it’s partnership with Lime, lookout for a substantial increase in ridership!